Welcome to Baltimore, Hon!Celebrating Baltimore, from the charming to the alarming2015-02-21T16:55:02Zhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/feed/atomWordPressJill Yeskohttp://murderinthedogpark.comhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=53202014-12-09T03:40:47Z2014-12-09T03:40:47ZIn 1978, fueled by a mission to publish sometimes obscure and out-of-print books by and for people of African descent, W. Paul Coates founded Black Classic Press (BCP) from his Baltimore basement. In the 36 years since, BCP has published more than 100 titles, including seminal works such as W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Negro, along with obscure titles such as Historical Sketches of the Ancient Negro, originally published in 1920. BCP has also published original works by best-selling crime fiction writer Walter Mosley, and poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller.

Photo: LinkedIn

Before founding BCP, Coates served as coordinator for the Maryland chapter of the Black Panther Party. He was instrumental in establishing the Black Panther Party Archives at Howard University where he served as an African American studies reference and acquisition librarian at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. BCP lists many Black Panther-related titles (see sidebar). Coates is a frequent guest on C-SPAN and has received numerous honors and awards. I spoke with Coates by phone about the future of BCP in the digital age and his mission to restore “the African American experience.”

How many titles does Black Classic Press publish annually?

There have been years when we published 14 titles, in some years we put out about three. Electronically, we put 10 titles into e-book format in 2014.

Publishers use the number of new books to speak to the economics and viability of the titles. I’m much more interested in the merits of the title. I’ve wanted to publish Garvey & Garveyism for more than 20 years. That was a decades-long desire.

Why Does Black Classic Press Focus on out of print books?

Knowledge and information don’t just begin in this moment. There is a lot of value in what’s gone before us. When you talk about the Black experience in America, so much of it has been devalued. We get to see a complete experience, not just the African American experience, but the American experience. The work I do is restoring the African American experience but more importantly, it is speaking to the American experience. It’s all connected and important.

Given the seismic changes the publishing industry, where will Black Classic Press be in five years?

I don’t know. Black Classic Press is tied to me. It’s so much a part of my vision that it’s very hard for me to project beyond my mortality. There is no one right now that is united in the vision I created Black Classic Press under.

As a former member of the Black Panthers, did you make a specific effort to carry titles by other Black Panthers?

All of the books I publish are committed to telling a story. These books I publish tell a long story. They start by telling about the ancient African past before enslavement, then the story after enslavement. The Panthers are a story about that. They are connected to the Garvey Movement [founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, Marcus Garvey promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral homelands and African unity]. Rather than think of my books as sections, I see them as a mosaic.

Was Black Classic Press the first to publish Walter Mosely?

He reached out to us by giving us a book (The Tempest Tales) to publish. It was actually his first book that had been rejected by numerous publishers. I say it’s his best book, and not just because I published it.

I have seven sons, five biological sons and two from marriage. I wanted one of my children to have an interest in the press. Years ago, I told Ta-Nehisi not to take over the press. He has achieved a much larger platform than Black Classic Press.

Did you offer to publish Ta-Nehisi’s autobiography The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood?

I refused to publish his book. I thought his writing deserved a national platform. He had to fly on his own merit — and he did. Besides, he’s taken large advances for his books!

Books about the Black Panthers from Black Classic Press:

Blood in My Eye by George Jackson

Panther is a Black Cat: An Account of the Early Years of The Black Panther Party – Its Origins, Its Goals, and Its Struggle for Survival by Reginald Major

Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton by Bobby Seale

The Black Panther Party Reconsidered Edited by Charles E. Jones

]]>0Jill Yeskohttp://murderinthedogpark.comhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=53102014-11-20T23:48:32Z2014-11-19T03:28:47ZBen Affleck is a lumbering lunkhead of a man — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As the quasi-Neanderthal lead actor in the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestseller Gone Girl, Affleck is aptly cast as Nick Dunne, the remarkably un-self aware husband of Amy (Rosamund Pike), whose disappearance is the axis on which this David Fincher (The Social Network, Fight Club) directed movie spins.

Amy is the indulged daughter of earnest parents who’ve mined her childhood for the plots of their successful Amazing Amy book series. Whip-smart and beautiful in a Seven Sisters preppie way, Amy is understandably unable to live up to her doppleganger’s achievements (flesh and blood real Amy wastes her talents writing relationship quizzes for lifestyle magazines). Believing she can’t be loved for who she is, Amy retaliates by turning herself into a succubus (well told in backstory) who preys on the men she snares in her tangled web—a spot-on swipe at dating mores where everyone is at the mercy of someone else’s pathologies.

Enter Nick, a freelance writer for men’s magazines (instead of vapid relationship quizzes, he probably writes articles about how to get better pecs in ten). Nick and Amy meet during a hipster party, and before you can say “Arcade Fire,” they’ve hooked up and are soon living in high boho style in a brownstone; so in love with being in love that they actually kiss in a storm of blown sugar. Gag.

The heavy-handed imagery foreshadows that it’s not all unicorns and rainbows in Amy and Nick’s future. Real life intervenes via the 2008 stock market crash that caused freelance writing careers to go the way of the brontosaurus. When Nick’s mother develops cancer, the couple move to Nick’s hometown in nowheresville Missouri where Nick and his fraternal twin sister Margo (well played by Carrier Coon) open a bar called, wait for it…The Bar (are you sure we aren’t still in Brooklyn?). While Nick shleps around in T-shirts and a five o’clock shadow, teaching writing courses at a local college and shtupping a student, Amy stews in their Stepford-like mini-mansion—an incongruous housing choice for ex-writers claiming penury.

And then, on their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy’s gone. Nick comes home after a night at the bar to find broken glass, overturned furniture, and nary a sign of Amy.

We’ve seen this plot device many, many, times before. The twist in this case is Gone Girl’s zeroing in on the Jon Benet Ramsey-like frenzy surrounding Amy’s disappearance. Within 24 hours, Amy’s absence spawns a media circus of epic proportions that includes swarms of selfie takers and women eager to get a piece of Nick. While Nick smiles for the camera, well-meaning townspeople are tying yellow ribbons around trees and literally beating the bushes to find Amy who has suddenly captured the hearts and minds of America.

Like a thought bubble above a cartoon character, slow-witted Nick realizes that Amy has not only staged her own disappearance, but she has hogtied him to the whipping post of public judgement. You’re meant to get angry at Nick for ripping Amy from the bosom on Brooklyn, then cheating on her, and mad at Amy for behaving like a passive aggressive spoiled brat. I guess they don’t have couples counseling in Missouri.

Midway through Gone Girl I realized that I didn’t care if Amy came back or what had happened to her. I was bored, and that troubled me. And that’s a shame, because Flynn’s book cleverly detailed the exquisite mind fuckery between Amy and Nick. By the end of the book the reader can’t help but admire Nick’s anti-spiritual awakening as a master game player in a profoundly dysfunctional relationship that includes domestic violence.

A large part of Gone Girl’s problem is the casting of Pike as Amy. Pike is too mild to play devious Amy. Even when Amy supposedly hits bottom while hiding out in the Ozarks eating junk food and hanging out with trailer park trash (a ridiculous scene that falls flat in both the book and the movie), she looks like she’s on her way to shop at Talbots. Another Amy—Amy Adams—would have narrowed her green eyes, tossed her red hair, and fully embraced the deeply sociopathic nature of Amy’s character.

Although somewhat miscast as Desi, Amy’s long-ago paramour who still has the hots for her, Neil Patrick Harris brings the right amount of creep to his louche playboy. Desi rescues Amy and sets her up in his luxurious lake house like a pampered house cat. Desi’s the opposite of Nick: hyper attentive, flush, and willing to wait on Amy hand and foot. But girls being girls, we only want the boys we can’t have. For Amy, that means a bloody escape from Desi’s gilded grip (I haven’t seen that much blood on silk sheets since the horse head scene in the Godfather) and a return Nick’s not so loving arms. As TV crews film Amy’s miraculous homecoming, once inside their house, Amy and Nick circle each other like two cats ready for the next battle.

On a meta level Gone Girl is about the vicious games lovers play (think Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?), why people stay in relationships even when their expiration date’s long past, and how we delude ourselves about love and honesty. I wish David Fincher had used the same unsparing gaze he applied to his characters in The Social Network. It would have made Gone Girl more of a character study and less of a domestic set piece.

]]>0Michael Oleskerhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=52952014-09-26T12:32:14Z2014-09-26T07:29:33ZWhen the old-timers mention the bygone days, the gathering place they invariably talk about is the Horn & Horn, 304 East Baltimore Street, a bustling hangout which stayed open all night long from the dawning of the 20th century until that dreary winter morning in 1977 when the owners abruptly stuck a “Closed” sign in the window and signaled the end of several eras around here.

What kind of place was Horn & Horn?

Well, if it’s 7 o’clock in the morning in the 1950s, you could find three-term Mayor Tommy (The Elder) D’Alesandro huddled over scrambled eggs to talk City Hall election tactics with the northwest Baltimore political boss Jack Pollack.

Irma the Body

If it’s 2 o’clock in the morning in the 1960s, you might find some of the famous ladies from The Block, half a block away, ladies who have climbed back into their clothes and arrived here for their post-strip pancakes and bacon special.

If it’s seven o’clock in the evening in the early 1970s, you might find Bob Embry, the city’s housing commissioner under Mayor William Donald Schaefer, convening for dinner after a Monday city council meeting to toss around some new ideas for the Baltimore City Fair, which is helping to lift the city out of its post-riot doldrums.

It was, in short, a place where the town’s movers and shakers gathered to eat and talk, and see and be seen, and make the Earth move a little.

Or, as Gilbert Sandler described it in his marvelous book, Small Town Baltimore, Horn & Horn’s Restaurant was, “as Times Square was to old Broadway, the street’s soul…the only restaurant where Baltimore’s rich and poor, winners and losers, judges and pimps, merchant princes and numbers writers, fashion executives and exotic dancers, mayors and governors and city hall types alike all sat down next to one another comfortably, sharing time and space and conversation.”

It was also a place to get a pretty decent meal.

Maybe you got the house specialty – the Red Ball special of corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes; your waitress taking orders from half a dozen people without writing down a word but somehow managed to bring everything back exactly as everybody ordered it.

Also certain: the veteran counterman, Kelly Raines, knew your name and knew how you liked your meal prepared.

But nothing lasts forever, and it’s nearly four decades since they closed the place – and replaced it with a Wendy’s carry-out and, after that, another eating place whose name has been lost to memory.

Then, approaching the new century, the city tore down the old Horn & Horn building and several adjoining spots and eventually put up a 375-car parking garage – and a new restaurant.

You go there today and you pick up a tray and serve yourself.

It’s the Big Apple Tree Café, and it still draws courthouse types and cops and others from the east side of the city’s central business and financial district.

The café offers a pay-by-weight hot or cold buffet. There’s seating for a couple hundred people, once you navigate your way inside past the handful of poor souls lying about on Holliday Street, along the restaurant’s east side.

On a recent morning one fellow’s curled in the fetal position, sleeping off a bad night. A few feet from him, a guy in a baseball cap squats with his hand out as a lady in high heels steps around the fellow’s handful of large plastic trash bags filled with his belongings.

A few feet from him, two men huddle with their knapsacks in the morning’s heat beneath a sign reading “Bacon, Egg & Cheese Sandwich: $3.14.”

It feels a little bit like a metaphor for a changing America: the personalization of service replaced by homogenized, mass-production, look-alike food service; and lots of people parking their cars ($18 for the day) and arriving so hungry to get on with their lives that they speed past society’s leftovers and try as best they can not to notice them.

The “O” and the inclining “Baltimore” lettering on the t-shirt are similar to designs on merchandise sold by the Baltimore Orioles. When contacted by WTBH, a representative of the Orioles organization declined to comment on the record.

Attempts to contact Stamps and the principals of Defiant AD have not been successful.

The Sept. 9 publication by the USPTO begins a 30-day period during which any party who may be damaged by registration of the trademark to file either an opposition to registration or request an extension of the deadline to oppose. If no oppositions are filed or are unsuccessful, the trademark owner is sent a certificate of registration.

According to a source familiar with the matter, a party already plans on filing an opposition to the trademark.

In December of 2010, a “hontroversy” erupted when Baltimoreans learned that Cafe Hon owner Denise Whiting had registered HON trademarks for a variety of printed products such as bumper stickers and coffee mugs. After a year of protests and boycotts that drove Cafe Hon to the brink of failure, Whiting relinquished claims on the trademarks.

Whiting declined to comment on this story.

“After everything that happened, I can’t imagine anyone willing to jeopardize their business by trademarking that word,” said Charlene Osborne, a former “Baltimore’s Best Hon” winner who works as a professional hon under the name of Blaze Char and published a book, My Year as Baltimore’s Best Hon.

“I suggest whoever these people are make a date with Denise Whiting at Cafe Hon and ask her how that worked out,” said Baltimore author and WTBH contributor Rafael Alvarez. “This news will be widely disseminated, and the controversy will rage anew. It won’t be worth the few dollars they make off the symbol.”

]]>1Guest Contributorhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.comhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=52752014-09-19T00:22:44Z2014-09-19T00:22:08ZAfter writing up a post on the history of Baltimore City recently we were inspired to go out and pick up a copy of The Baltimore Rowhouseby Mary Ellen Hayward and Charles Belfoure. We really can’t recommend it highly enough. The authors begin all the way back in the 1700′s when the city consisted mostly of large land grant estates and does a great job of explaining how those estates were eventually subdivided and developed, from the very first wooden shacks to the golden age of builders like Keelty and Gallagher, who built most of the iconic Baltimore rows to modern infill construction and renovation.

The book also did an outstanding job of explaining the different styles of rowhouses found in the city, and illustrating what got built where- and when and why. At times it goes deeper into details on architecture and building technique than most people would ever need to know, but remains an interesting read nonetheless. But what if you want to know the various rowhouse types without spending $27 and reading through 200 pages? Never fear. The Chop is here with an illustrated book report.

This post is meant to show the most common types of rowhouses found in Baltimore, and to match their names to their pictures. We’ll also do a tiny bit of explaining along the way. The Chop is, of course, not an architect or anything, so if we’ve got anything wrong here or if there’s something that should be added we’d encourage those more in the know than we are to send us an email….[continue reading at The Baltimore Chop]

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The Baltimore Chop is just a regular dude. With a blog. A Baltimore native who loves living here; a homeowner, thirty-something single guy, traveler, blue-collared, Progressive, grown-up punk, consumer of culture, an old-fashioned type with modern sensibilities.

]]>0Jill Yeskohttp://murderinthedogpark.comhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=52702014-09-09T03:10:35Z2014-09-09T03:10:35ZBrendon Gleeson’s face is a landscape of crags and ridges framed by a mane of wind-whipped hair—a countenance that echoes the wild, Irish coast of County Sligo, the setting for brooding Calvary. Shots of otherworldly Benbulbin, the weird, flat-topped mountain that looms over the small town of Easkey, establishes a mood of eerie omniscience that dogs Calvary to its violent conclusion.

The movie begins with an irresistible premise: during confession, a parishioner tells a Father James (Gleeson) that as a boy, he was repeated molested by a priest. Because of this transgression he will kill Father James in seven days to avenge the “original sin” of the now-deceased molester. It’s a great framing device, one that provides director John Michael McDonagh (The Guard, Ned Kelly) with a clock-is-ticking countdown to resolve this theological whodunnit.

Given its title, it’s no coincidence that Calvary is rife with biblical symbolism. Like a modern-day Job, Father James is harassed and beleaguered by his parishioners who challenge him at every juncture about matters of faith, integrity, and the role of the Catholic church in modern life. Accusations of adultery, usury, perfidy, and all other iterations of mortal and venal sins are volley back and forth. Father James has no compunction about taking swipes at the church. James literally and figuratively takes punches that each parishioner doles out (no pushover, Father James also gets in his licks).

In an exchange with fellow priest Father Leary—a toady functionary wonderfully played as a comic foil by David Wilmot—Father James accuses Leary of lacking integrity and having faith that’s merely skin deep. Without abiding faith, life is insufferable (other than Father James, the only other person depicted with true faith is a French tourist whose husband dies in a car accident). Given that so many in the movie question faith, it’s no surprise that midway through the film Father James church is burned to the ground. Heavy symbolism indeed.

Father James isn’t going down without a fight; he’s no willing, sacrificial lamb. Father James knows the identity of his assassin, and rather than fleeing, he lives out his remaining days with increasing intensity as he uneasily confronts his own demons while reconciling his strained relationship with his adult daughter Fiona (the luminous Kelly Reilly), who dresses him down for abandoning her for the priesthood. Indeed, Fiona becomes a confessor to her father, whose only other friend and confidant is his dog Bruno.

As Sunday approaches, Father James reconciles his affairs. At the beach, about to meet his killer, Father James counsels Michael Fitzgerald (Dylan Moran), a morally bankrupt millionaire who stands in for Ireland’s failed

“Celtic Tiger” property bubble that ruined the country’s economy. Looking his killer in the eye, Father James faces down death not with a long-winded speech, but with a mixture of defiance, fear, and faith. In the end, it doesn’t so much matter who killed Father James as it is what people do or don’t do in the name of God.

]]>1Bruce Goldfarbhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=52402014-09-04T22:33:15Z2014-09-04T22:30:33ZIn November of 1939, notorious mobster Al Capone was released from federal custody after serving almost eight years in Alcatraz for tax evasion. Capone traveled to Baltimore for treatment of paresis — a psychotic dementia caused by widespread brain damage in tertiary syphilis — at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Wary of Capone’s reputation, Hopkins refused to admit him. As a compromise, Capone was treated at Union Memorial Hospital, where many Hopkins doctors had admitting privileges.

At Union Memorial, Capone was allowed to take over the whole fifth floor. Obsessed that foes would try to poison him, Capone brought a food taster during his five-week hospital stay. His entourage also included bodyguards, his barber, a masseur and various family members. After his release from Union Memorial, Capone spent several months recuperating at the Mt. Washington home of a Maryland State Police sergeant, returning to his Florida villa on March 20, 1940.

Bowl by Nick Aloisio. Photo: Union Memorial Hospital

To show his appreciation for the hospitality and care provided by Union Memorial, Capone he gave the hospital two weeping cherry trees. One of the trees was removed the early 1950s for the construction of a new wing. In February of 2010, the remaining tree split in half after a heavy snowfall. From the felled branch, Virginia artist Nick Aloisio crafted several bowls, trinket boxes, wine stoppers, pens and other items that were sold on eBay in 2012 as a fundraiser for the hospital. All of the younger weeping cherry trees on the Union Memorial campus are descendants cultivated by an arborist from Capone’s original tree.

]]>1Caryn Coylehttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=52272014-09-04T22:26:01Z2014-09-03T16:44:19ZStan Lee, the black cat, lies almost invisible on a chair of the same color. Behind him is a wall of biographies. Next to a twin black chair, cady-corner from him, is a basket of Nancy Drew mysteries.

“There are approximately one thousand books for sale – or barter – at the Parkville Bookworm,” said owner Melissa Eisenmeier. On the corner of Audrey Avenue and East Joppa Road, the bookstore offers about sixty percent fiction and forty percent non-fiction.

Melissa Eisenmeier, owner of Parkville Bookworm, with three of her favorites.

No book is more than ten dollars and many paperbacks sell for less than a dollar. In eleven hundred square feet of retail space, the Parkville Bookworm sells all kinds of fiction, from historical to mysteries to science fiction. Art books, cook-books, histories, books on humor and locally produced jewelry are also offered for sale along with regional artwork.

In what was a grocery store, the Parkville Bookworm opened six months ago. According to Eisenmeier, the bookstore is located in an area of Baltimore where 20,000 readers reside. Parkville is also her hometown. A graduate of Parkville High School, she attended the Community College of Baltimore County, intending to become a paramedic.

“I changed my mind,” Eisenmeirer explained. “I’ve always loved books, I like people and I wanted to own my own business. So I opened a bookstore.”

Holding up three of her favorite authors, Michael Koryta, whose So Cold the River was priced at $.94, Tanya Huff’s The Wild Ways ($2.83) and Erica Spindler’s Cause for Alarm ($2.83), Eisenmeier also offers a wide variety of others. Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky, was on the same shelf with Melissa Banks’ The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Gail Godwin, Nora Ephron, A. Scott Berg shared wall space, though in different sections, with the Hardy Boys, Madeline, and the American Girl series for children.

The Parkville Bookworm averages a couple of hundred book sales a month. And it allows readers to bring in books for store credit. Eisenmeirer will look through the old books; a dollar will be offered for a substantial biography. “A little bit less for a paperback,” she added.

Parkville Bookworm staff cat Stan Lee

Stan Lee, the “staff cat,” whom she got from Charm City Animal Rescue, was a foster cat at first. Eisenmeier wasn’t certain she would keep him. She’d been advised that visitors to the bookstore might increase when word spread that a cat was there. Some may come just to pat or befriend him and wind up browsing the bookshelves.

Business is picking up and Stan Lee is staying, mainly in the black chair that matches his coat.

Located at 2300 East Joppa Road, The Parkville Bookworm is open Tuesday through Saturday 10–8; Sundays noon-6. Closed Mondays. Learn more from the store’s website.

Photos: Caryn Coyle

]]>1Bruce Goldfarbhttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=51732014-04-14T11:52:41Z2014-04-14T11:48:58ZI recently fell for a piece of Buzzfeed clickbait — 13 Of The Most Baltimore Things That Ever Happened — which turned out to be a disappointingly lame listicle. There wasn’t even a half-hearted attempt to deliver on the promise of the headline. It’s just a random series of vaguely Baltimore-related images slapped together, a provocative headline aimed at getting suckers like me to click the link.

Oh come on. Baltimore has a rich history and culture. It shouldn’t be difficult to follow through on the premise and make an actual list of events that illustrate the city’s character. In short order I came up with my own list. In no particular order, they are:

1. This flag:

Image: National Museum of American History via Flickr under Creative Commons license.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but in 1814 Baltimore saved America’s ass. That August, the British trashed the District of Columbia — looting and burning the Capitol, White House, Treasury and War Department, and sending President Madison scurrying away to safety. After their envisioned destruction of the industrial and shipping port of Baltimore, the Brits intended to sweep through to Philadelphia, at the time the country’s financial capital. But it was not to be. British and American troops skirmished all over East Baltimore, most notably at North Point. Then ships bombarded Fort McHenry for 25 hours, a relentless barrage of shells fired in a futile attempt to overtake the city’s inner harbor. A lawyer wrote a poem about Mary Pickersgill’s humongous 40-foot hand-sewn flag, which was set to an English drinking song and made our national anthem. You’re welcome.

2. This lesson:

Countless discoveries and innovations have been developed at Baltimore’s medical institutions. One incident that shows the spirit of Baltimore happened on November 21, 1807. In that year, physician John Beale Davidge constructed an anatomical theater behind his home at the corner of Liberty and Saratoga and along with colleagues began offering a course of instruction to medical students, featuring the study of anatomy using human cadavers. Locals did not like this. On the night of Nov. 21, a violent mob broke into the anatomical theater and seized the cadaver — “the waterlogged body of a criminal who had drowned himself,” by one account — and dragged it through the streets. Because that’s dignified and respectful. For good measure, the mob thoroughly demolished the building and its contents. State lawmakers quickly chartered the College of Medicine of Maryland and earmarked money for a new mob-resistant building. It was the first medical school in America to require the study of human anatomy. With cadavers.

3. This machine:

Of all the innovations to emerge from Baltimore — gas lighting, railroading, the telegraph, and the hand-held electric drill to name a few — none had so profound and far-reaching impact as the linotype. Invented by German immigrant watchmaker Ottmar Mergenthaler, the linotype was the pinnacle of Victorian-era engineering — thousands of clattering parts that cast a line of type from molten lead. The machine was a revolutionary improvement over hand-set type. The linotype allowed affordable, mass-produced publications: magazines, newspapers, books. Costs dropped, and literacy went up. The machine ushered in an era of mass communication. The fact that you’re able to read this at all is thanks to Mergenthaler’s invention.

4. This street:

Every year, the residents on this block of Hampden’s 34th Street crank up their utility bills and tolerate the street clogged with traffic and crowds of gawkers in front of their homes. It’s a block-long multi-home over-the-top holiday light extravaganza. Nobody makes a penny from it. They do it because it makes people happy.

5. This band:

After the execrable weasel Robert Irsay snuck the Baltimore Colts out of town under the cover of darkness in 1984, the Baltimore Colts Marching Band continued to perform at parades and special events for years because why the hell not. In 1998, the band officially became the Baltimore Marching Ravens.

6. This writer:

Image: William S. Niederkorn, New York Public Library.

Buzzfeed almost got something right by listing the Poe Toaster, but the Toaster is only window dressing for the main act — Edgar Allan Poe. Of all the literary figures who called Baltimore home — including H.L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Walter Lord, Russell Baker, Emily Post, Upton Sinclair, Ogden Nash and Leon Uris among many others — Poe’s legacy is most enduring. Poe lived here, wrote here, and died here under mysterious circumstances. Sure, the Poe Toaster was a nice mystery, but it probably wasn’t even perpetrated by a Baltimorean. Poe is one of our own, and he continues to fascinate people today.

7. These fake cops:

Images: NBC

Baltimore has been depicted on the large and small screen by John Waters, Barry Levinson, and David Simon — all storytellers who draw upon real people and events. The line between fiction and reality was obliterated on October 7, 1996, when a shoplifting suspect fleeing a North Avenue pharmacy turned a corner and stumbled onto a location where a scene for Homicide: Life on the Streets was being recorded. Seeing Richard Belzer and Clark Johnson — who portrayed detectives John Munch and Meldrick Lewis respectively — with guns drawn over an actor playing a murder suspect spread-eagled on the street, the thief promptly surrendered. The incident was worked into a 5th-season episode of H:LOTS, in which a suspect is chased onto a movie set and surrenders to actors playing cops. Levinson, who was executive producer of the show, does a cameo as himself as the movie director. It’s a Inception-esque example of art imitating life imitating art imitating life.

8. This hon:

Hon Man in action, 1993

Beginning in the early 1990s, a person known as Hon Man — and others following his initiative — risked serious injury and criminal penalties to deface a sign on Baltimore-Washington Parkway with a familiar term of endearment. Isn’t that nice?

9. This protest:

Photo: Bill Hughes

All was fine and well until December of 2010, when Baltimoreans learned that one person — Denise Whiting of Café Hon — had trademarked the word “HON.” Locals did not like this. An ensuing hontroversy erupted with protests, vandalism, online flame wars, and a boycott that nearly forced Café Hon out of business. Reportedly, nothing like this has ever happened before. There’s never been a wide-spread public outcry and revolt over a trademark. Fortunately, Gordon Ramsay made it right in an episode of Kitchen Nightmares. The trademarks are gone, and all is well again.

10. This swim:

Image: Baltimore Sun

Irascible and colorful, there was no doubt that William Donald Schaefer deeply loved his hometown. During four terms as mayor, Schaefer rebuilt Baltimore — with homesteading, Harborplace, a convention center, the National Aquarium and numerous other projects and developments. He gave Baltimoreans a reason to visit the Inner Harbor area and turned it into a tourist attraction. He changed how people felt about Baltimore. The “Do It NOW” mayor made good copy, prone to outbursts about potholes and projects lagging behind schedule. On July 15, 1981, Schaefer settled a wager that the aquarium would be finished on time by taking a dunk in the seal pool, letting people know that the city was a fun and lively place.

Have I missed anything? What would you add to the list?

]]>9Caryn Coylehttp://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=51482014-02-04T01:34:37Z2014-02-04T01:23:05ZA. Aubrey Bodine’s daughter, Jennifer, has published another showcase for her father’s photography: Bodine’s Industry The Dignity of Work. “I selected pictures of work and industries that no longer exist,” Jennifer Bodine explained. Indeed, the artistic black and white photographs illustrate an era that has vanished.

Bodine “was not a consistent recorder of what he photographed,” according to his daughter. Instead, his images are rich, thoughtful compositions. In “Lacrosse Sticks,” taken in 1951, the old fashioned wooden sticks — used by players more than sixty years ago — serve as a backdrop for the wood carver at the center of the photograph.

“Tomatoland,” shot in 1935, has a quality of nostalgia. Wearing a straw hat, a worker sets the scene in the foreground, holding up wooden baskets for the tomatoes. The photograph is enhanced by the caps and clothing of the workers and the rural landscape in the background.

Oysters and Skipjacks

A Baltimore Sunday Sun feature photographer from 1927 to 1970, A. Aubrey Bodine was world-renowned. Jennifer Bodine explained that Bodine’s Industry “contains his award winning pictures, currently popular pictures, historically interesting pictures, and ones that were never seen again after they were printed in the Sun story.”

“Baltimore Harbor Night,” which won numerous awards, was taken in 1949 and shown in almost one hundred exhibitions throughout the United States and around the world. Its shimmering reflection of the harbor’s lights, point of view from beneath the ropes on a dock and large ship in the center of the photograph are breathtaking. Bodine said, “I have proven conclusively that a newspaper photographer can make…this one time pugilistic, slam-bang profession into a dignified and honorable art.”

Lacrosse Sticks

After four years at the Sun, running ad copy and taking the photos no one else wanted to take, Bodine was promoted to be the newspaper’s commercial art department photographer at eighteen years of age. At twenty-one, he was named the Sunday Sun‘s features photographer. His daughter explained that “Bodine was an artist with a regular paycheck … blessed with a lifetime of editors who nurtured his creativity.”

His 1955 photo, “Oysters and Skipjacks” depicts his genius. The photograph frames the oysters under the ship’s sail, covering its deck at water level where two skipjacks sail in the background. Bodine explained that he would “approach an image and think about what would be a trite and usual approach to shooting it. Then consider how to render it in a different manner.”

Bodine’s Industry, published by Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. of Atglen, Pennsylvania, has 173 digitally restored black and white photographs. Signed copies are available at A. Aubrey Bodine’s website. The book vividly showcases Jennifer Bodine’s assessment of her father’s “knowledge and sense of light and he controlled it to communicate beauty and mood.”